


In a little while

by deitheo



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, LIKE A LOT OF ANGST, M/M, everyone is in pain yay, honestly francis, there are better ways to deal with murder, there isn't much explicity tho, unrequited feelings, wow using sex to dumb down pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 23:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17517755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deitheo/pseuds/deitheo
Summary: "'We'll see you in a little while,' he said and then I heard their footsteps dying on the stair."





	In a little while

We’ll see you in a little while.

What a nice sentence this is - a pretty alliteration, tongue touching the roof of the mouth, birdlike, a soft hello from the other side of life. The one where they have no blood on their hands. The one where Francis does not want to fuck the guilt away. The morning light is cold and unforgiving.

They do not speak on the way to his apartment - they don’t need to. Somehow Charles always seems to remember what to do when he is drunk. Francis thinks he doesn’t mind. He’ll take what he can get. It is way too early to think, the world is way too quiet to speak. So everything stops. They are in a timeless place, a limbo, where they have to await their judgement. Francis thinks that maybe, if they stay long enough, the judgement will not come. Maybe the catastrophe will somehow pass through him like a shiver - cold to the touch, though completely inconsequential. 

He is a coward.

‘I fucking hate those floors.’ 

The key turns with a click. This is the first thing any of them said in the last half-hour, and Francis’s voice is hoarse. 

‘I don’t give a shit.’

Francis is pinned to the wall and Charles’s perfect hands are all over him. His knee is jammed between his legs and it hurts. His kisses hurt too - he is the one to be violent, bite, draw blood and immediately sanitize the tear with the stench of whiskey. Everything hurts and shall Francis be damned if he says this isn’t just what he needs. 

And maybe just once, he thinks, it would be only a fuck. An alcohol and guilt-fueled act of mutual pleasure, because body can dull the mind. Maybe he could forget the longing agony of the mind and focus on the touch.

How sad it is that mind and body are inextricably intertwined. How stupidly tragic it is that   
Francis was not born compliant to fate. And how pathetic is the little noise that he makes when Charles’s lips touch the back of his hand.

He whispers something. Either an obscenity or a compliment, and now Francis would do everything for him to keep going. How can he be so tough and so gentle, and how, honest God, can he make him lose the last bits of dignity he clung onto? Now everything is destroyed. He is not a bare body yet, but his shirt is already on the floor and he has stepped on it at least twice - tomorrow he will die mad about it.

‘I got new sheets’, he whispers. Francis caresses Charles’s back. He wants it to be soothing but it just turns out feeble.

‘I bet you’d look fantastic on them.’

Francis would let him do anything. 

They are tangled in a mess of pale limbs and scratches, they pull their hands over each other’s mouths, there is sweat, cursing and pain, but it feels like something else. Something else entirely, Francis thinks of salvation, Charles does not think at all. 

Thin hands pinned to a white cotton sheet. A curve of near-perfect lips. Red bruises left by careless mouths. They are killers, they are people, the most human creatures that have ever walked the earth, though they both feel detached from their humanity. They are a statue carved in marble, they are a picture in the eyes of a forgotten god. They are something that wanted to happen but never did.

They lie flat on their backs and smoke. Morning sobriety should start to kick in pretty soon. But not yet. For now they are still fateless.   
Francis puts his hand on Charles’s stomach.

Francis calls him ἐρώμενος and hopes that he is too drunk to understand.

Charles smiles and barely shakes his head. He does not listen.


End file.
